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Show Page 87 immediate superior - and as Justice of the Municipal Court. When the Prophet organized an arm of the militia under the Nauvoo Charter, Bennett became "Major General," second in command of the Nauvoo Legion after Joseph Smith himself. Although he had been expelled from the order of Freemasonry in Ohio, he advanced its cause among the Mormon elders, and Joseph Smith was persuaded in February of 1841 to start a Masonic lodge in Nauvoo, to which most of the townsmen ultimately belonged. Bennett's influence thus pervaded every corner of Nauvoo society, and 24 Orson and Sarah became independently his friends and sympathizers. With the growth of the Mormon establishment came also the maturing of its doctrinal matrix. Joseph Smith's "dispensation of fulness" theology tended toward a standard of inclusionism, and hints from the Old Testament, from Masonry, and from the "record of Abraham" as gleaned from Joseph's papyrus treasures, combined at this time in a grand revelatory complex so radically different from orthodox Protestant notions that it qualified as one of the few true theological revolutions in Christian history. Many puzzling facets of the Bible - the early patriarchal prerogatives, the desperate importance placed on posterity, odd ritual inklings and echoes - suddenly came together for Joseph. In the mumbo-jumbo of Masonry he heard corrupt suggestions of ancient priestly rites which may possibly have borne on the temple cults of the Hebrews and the Egyptians. Out of the scattered notions of liberals, communists, and perfectionists came talk of "complex marriage" and "spiritual wifery" and a return to the polygynous society of patriarchal ages. whatever influences sparked the revelations of Joseph Smith, a radical concept of man emerged at this time which was to be amplified and elaborated for decades in the writings of Orson Pratt. Man, it |